*ban
Thai London Therapy Marylebone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1ZHc8pGIV8

I got forwarded to Thai homepage of dailymotion, with a notice (in Thai) that the video had been removed. Thanks for trying though!

I guess the Thai Parliament must have different rules then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmMlYfI9dLM

@SDGundamX -- I've lived in Thailand for almost 10 years, and a lot of the things she mentions for Japan are similar here or at least have semi-related corresponding cultural rules.

I also definitely have "farang privilege" which would be the Thai equivalent of "gaijin privilege". Not showing emotion is also big here, especially with regards to anger. Thais avoid confrontation at pretty much all costs. Which in and of itself can be infuriating -- sometimes a process or system is woefully inadequate or blatantly broken, but point it out as an area of concern (even in a constructive way) and an entire room of Thais will break into nervous silence out of fear of insulting or appearing critical of whoever is responsible for said system.

I love living here, but sometimes the cultural differences can be an obstacle...

I didn't see the "praying" in the rolling video, but the stills that look like that make me pretty sure that he's actually doing a Thai "wai": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_greeting

As that link mentions, the wai can be used for greeting / thank you / sorry depending on the situation. The still looks exactly like the kind of posture I'd expect in a "sorry" wai -- so I bet that he was treating the elephant in an anthropomorphic way and apologizing to it.

One more interesting but maybe less relevant piece of information about wais -- the height of where you put your "praying hands" along your chest/head is used to denote rank / class differences or add extra deference. So thumbs at sternum is used for equal rank / age, thumbs at chin/mouth for bosses or elders, and thumbs at nose for monks. If you really fuck something up and want to apologize profusely you can wai with thumbs on your forehead.

...So, although I think the guy was doing an "apologetic wai" to the elephant, his thumbs were at sternum level, which suggests that he's treating the elephant as an equal and has a certain degree of nonchalance.

I'm fine with your other points, but you really think there are not working, funded refugee camps in Turkey?

An_Aerial_View_of_the_Zaatri_Refugee_Camp.jpg

http://sheldonkirshner.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Turkish-refugee-camp-for-Syrians-e1413585834309.jpg

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/pb-120411-syria-refugees-ps2.photoblog900.jpg

Are they amazing? No, but I've never stepped foot in a refugee camp that was (and, yes, for the record I have visited several). Compared to the 30-year-old jungle camps on the Thai-Burma border, these places look pretty well outfitted. They clearly have the infrastructure, support and funding to serve the populations that are there.

What they don't have is the economic infrastructure to allow for good, rewarding work for these refugees. Of course, that is generally the situation for every refugee population. The biggest difference here is that some Syrian refugees have the financial resources to reach Europe whereas most refugees in other parts of the world don't.

And that's how the Blob discovered thai food.

Your video, How To Make Thai Ice Cream, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Those were both interesting to see and helped me establish some of the pros/cons of the goalie playing aggressively like that -- thanks!

It is quite similar in many ways to NHL goalies. In hockey, an aggressive goalie will skate relatively far out of their net to cut down the angle on shots from the periphery -- but that can go very wrong if the opposing team can sneak in behind them and get a shot on an essentially empty net. Like the hockey equivalent of the second video there.

And some hockey goalies pride themselves on being able to play the puck; accurately pass it up and out of their half of the ice, contributing to offense (but usually 2-3 or more passes removed from a shot attempt), etc. Some goalies *want* to be good at that, but end up just getting themselves into trouble. In that first video, Neuer looks like one of the NHL goalies that likes to play that way AND is actually good at it -- I'll think of him as the football equivalent of Martin Brodeur from the NHL, maybe.

Thanks again for going out of the way to enlighten me. I've got lots of friends here in Thailand (native Thais as well as Brits and Europeans) that are big into football while I'm usually pretty clueless. I tend to relate to football through the lens of hockey, as I'm sure you can tell. But it is good to get a bit better informed.

Your video, Elegant Handmade Fresh Thai Ice Cream Rolls, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I don't think the original video had audio, or at least I didn't hear it. Fun to hear them talking about it in Thai, although they don't say anything particularly scientifically relevant -- more like "augh! help me!" (out of surprise) and then some mild cussing about it.

The caption/title I get from the original video says:
"น่ากลัว หนอนทะเล เป็นแบบนี้"

First word is "na-grua" which means "scary", or more directly/literally "worthy of fear". The second word is compound, "nohn-talay" which means "worm-ocean", or "marine worm" would be a less literal but better English translation. The last word is actually 3 words: "pben baap ni", which roughly means "is like this". So an overall translation of the YT video title would be "this is a scary marine worm".

...Oops, and just now I'm seeing the YT description, which has a lot more Thai and does specifically mention Nemertea -- so that is probably correct. It looks and behaves a lot like some of the sea cucumbers that I've seen, although most tend to have a bit more texture or protrusions on their skin. But there are definitely sea cucumbers that are as smooth as this thing. Compare with a similar sea cucumber video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKWSLg5PDiU

Quite similar, but sounds like the Nemertea does this to eat whereas the Sea Cucumber does it as a defense mechanism.
--EDIT-- Whoops, embedded the wrong video. Should be fixed now

UPDATE below also see new video description and original video

The caption is in Thai and describes the creature as a Nemertea, or a ribbon worm, which shoots a proboscis (elongated nose) out of a hole above its mouth to capture prey.

Presumably, that is what is going on here.

When not stretched out like an alien life form, the proboscis normally sits in “a fluid-filled chamber above the gut,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

And here’s a description of how it works from NCSU:

"When the animal senses a prey organism nearby, a circular muscle layer around the proboscis sheath rapidly and vigorously contracts. This contraction forces the fluid from the proboscis sheath into the proboscis and, in the process, literally turns it inside out, blowing it out of the proboscis sheath. The proboscis will rapidly (within a second or so) wrap itself around the prey, which is then drawn to the mouth and eaten."

from http://thedailywh.at/2015/05/nope-day-internet-disgusted-mystified-ribbon-worm/

I'm very late to this, but...

It is definitely Thailand. Every city is a rat's nest of electrical cables, telephone lines etc. just like that. Construction is generally pretty haphazard, and public safety is rather low on the checklist...

I've lived in Thailand for the past 8 years, and speak Thai well enough to give a translation of the beginning of the video, which is pretty funny:
Guy 1: (pointing) Scary, isn't it?
Guy 2: (camera) Jeez, what asshole set this up?

That's a pretty close translation. The guy with the camera refers to the people responsible as "heeah", which literally means "monitor lizard" but is used colloquially as a slur somewhere between "asshole" or "mother f*cker". Thai uses animal words like that as insults in several other instances also, with a softer example being "kwai" which literally means "(water) buffalo", but colloquially is like calling someone a "stubborn dumbass". Sorta like "jackass" in English, but a bit more offensive.

I think she does it here because that is her experience -- to random people that she meets, they immediately identify her as "Asian", but nothing more specific than that. Plus, the talk seems to be delivered to a group of mostly, well, Asians. There are massive cultural differences between subgroups for sure, but on the other hand I'm sure they do share some common experiences due to being someone readily identifiable as "Asian" in a Western country.


...And I think you're wrong about no-one referring to Germans, French, Italians, English, etc. as "Europeans". I think LOTS of Americans do that if they see someone who is white and doesn't have an American accent, but they can't identify their particular home country.

And as an example on the other side of the coin, as a white American living in Thailand, I get Thais asking me these same sorts of questions ALL THE TIME. "Where are you from", etc., just like Nat described as happening to Asians in the west. Heck, in Thai the word for any western foreigner (non-Thai) is "farang", which most likely has roots in the way Thais heard and tried to repeat the word "France" as said by early French visitors, who were some of the first westerners to visit the country. In Thai, "France" is said like "fah-rang-sey" or "fah-rang-set", and most people think that the word "farang" for any westerner comes from that. So, if I go out with my British friends, the Thais will refer to all of us as "farang", which is basically like calling us "Frenchie". My Brit friends tend to take a bit more offense to that than I do...

But in all seriousness, I don't find being called a "farang" offensive. It is basically never meant as an insult, and in my opinion westerners calling Chinese / Japanese / Thai "Asian" isn't either. It can get annoying, but annoying isn't exactly the same thing as offensive.